- Id
- 55
- Date
- 31/08/2008
- First
- Magomed
- Surname
- YEVLOYEV
- Sex/Age
- M
- Incident
- homicide
- Motive
- J
- Place
- car
- Job
- chief editor
- Medium
- internet
- Federal District Plus
- North Caucasus
- Street, Town, Region
- Ingushetia
- Freelance
- yes
- Local/National
- local, Ingushetia.ru
- Other Ties
- opposition
- Cause of Death
- murder, shot
- Legal Qualification
- 109 (negligent homicide)
- Impunity
- trial, preliminary hearing, 10 December 2008
On 31 August 2008 the chief editor of the opposition website Ingushetia.ru, Magomed Yevloyev, was shot dead while being driven in custody from the airport at Magas. Yevloyev was arrested by local police as he came off an airplane and was later brought to hospital with bullet wounds to the head from which he died.
He was arrested, said the Ingushetia ministry of internal affairs, as part of the criminal case against those who had planted explosives in the office of an aide to the president of Ingushetia. During the journey into Nazran Yevloyev attempted to seize the weapon of one of the officers, it was said, and the latter accidentally fired at him. A criminal case was soon instigated under Article 109, “Accidental infliction of death” but relatives and numerous acquaintances of Yevloyev did not accept this account of his death and said his killing was a deliberate act of intimidation directed against the opposition and human rights movement in the North Caucasian republic.
Protests came from international and Russian media monitors. In October 2008 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev removed President Zyazikov of Ingushetia from power and replaced him with Yunus-bek Yevkurov.
Ingushetia.ru was a major opposition force in the small republic. In one noteworthy action it encouraged citizens to help expose the falsification of the presidential vote in the territory by signing an online petition that, contrary to the claimed mass turnout, they had not taken part in the elections.
Update, 13 July 2009 (Reuters)
Yevloyev's family say they have lodged an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights after previous cases collapsed. They have also appealed to Russia's president to intervene in the case.
The death of Yevloyev in August 2008 sparked massive protests against the local authorities. "We have appealed to the European Court because nothing will ever be decided in Ingushetia," said his father Yakhya Yevloyev. "And there is still another hope. We wrote to President Dmitry Medvedev and we await his answer," he told Reuters.
A spokeswoman for the European Court of Human Rights, based in Strasbourg, confirmed the Yevloyevs' application has been lodged but said the court has yet to decided if it will accept the case.